I know that this question has been largely answered, but I thought I throw in a few ideas of my own.
Most people can understand the Church’s stand on abortion and the sanctity of marriage, but female ordination seems quite innocuous. Perhaps I should rephrase my question: Would the ordination of women alter the fundamental nature of the Church so much that it could never happen?
The real problem is the underlying understanding that people have of the priesthood.
When people talk about “women priests”, they have often (I can’t read people’s minds, but I would suggest that it’s always) reduced the priest to a mere functionary. What does the priest
do? He reads prayers from a book, he gives a homily, and does some actions as instructed. The functionary aspect of the priesthood is not rocket science, and anyone in high school could perform such actions (maybe the homily wouldn’t be that good though).
Especially in the last 400 years though, the Church has insisted on higher standards for priests above and beyond just being able to perform a Mass, so there’s obviously some understanding that’s missing there.
It has always been understood, for one, that the priest stands in the place of Christ (who came as the Son of God, a man). When the priest says the Words of Consecration, he says “This is
my body”, not “This is Jesus’ body”. During confession, the priest says “
I absolve you”.
If you want a really good resource, I actually found Scott Hahn’s “Many Are Called” to be a great book on the history of the priesthood within the Jewish tradition. For example, before the Exodus, the
Patriarch of each family performed the priestly duties. The duties of the High Priest were later given to Aaron and his sons, and the temple duties to the males of the tribe of Levi. Within our Abrahamic roots, priesthood and priestly duties have
always been
exclusively been carried out by males. Other religions of the time and region had priestesses, so it wasn’t like that was an unknown idea, but Judaism always had priests. So this is something you can say that has been ordained by God from time immemorial.
It is true that Jesus did not “ordain” women and I’m not sure that the position of the proponents of female ordination that He was constrained by his cultural milieu can be dismissed without careful consideration.
Anyone who has done careful consideration has always seen that such a claim is false though.
Jesus dealt with women in a way that was sometimes outright scandalous at the time. Talking to the women at the well (who was also a Samaritan). Making women some of his closest disciples (but not apostles), such as Mary and Martha (Jesus seemed to have been very close friends with them). Letting the women (traditionally read as a prostitute) wash his feet with her tears and wipe them with her hair. The first person he appeared to after the resurrection was Mary Magdalen.
If Jesus wanted female priests, He would have made it happen. Israel in Jesus time was inundated by Greco-Roman ideas (and arguments have been made that there was a large population that was bilingual Greek speaking), and Greeks had priestesses. He could have easily pointed and said “See, it’s not something new I’m doing”. Given the Jewish traditions of the priesthood that Christianity has in a sense inherited, if Jesus wanted to make women priests then he would have had to have explicitly said so (like He did with the Eucharist).
Because Jesus did not saying anything to the contrary regarding the long-held tradition of priests being only male, and there is nothing in the Apostolic Tradition (or in the writings Fathers of the Church) to suggest otherwise, the only possible conclusion is that His intention was not to change priesthood to include women. He could have but He didn’t, and because He didn’t we have to assume that He meant to keep it the same.
, we are Catholics … Jesus chose just men to be apostles … And all, men and women, to be his disciples…